Page:Selected letters of Mendelssohn 1894.djvu/90

76 The man had been compelled to fly from the house during the night; the meadow had disappeared for ever, nothing but gravel and stones there now! “He was never rich, but now he is poor,” so ended the story of misfortune.

It was curious in the middle of this desolate scene, where the Lutschine had overflowed the entire breadth of the valley, to see a char-a-banc standing among the swamped meadows and blocks of stones, where no ghost of a road remained. There it is likely to stand for some time to come. Some people wanted to drive through right in the middle of the storm, but the tempest came down on them, and they had to leave trap and all in the mud, so there it stands waiting events. It was an ugly sight when we reached a place where the entire valley with the road and the dams on each side of the stream were covered with a mere sea of rocks. My guide, who was going on in front, kept murmuring to himself, “Awful work.” In the middle of the stream the water had whirled down two great tree trunks, and caught them on the sudden between two rocks, which pinned them in so as to leave the naked stems standing half upright. I could never get to an end of telling you all the shapes of devastation that one sees coming up here from Unterseen. But nevertheless the beauty of the valley made a greater impression on me than I can tell you. It was most unlucky that you never went up further than the Staubbach, the point where the real Lauterbrunnen valley begins. As you go up the Schwarze Mönch, with all the snows behind, it rises grander and grander;